Relationships

It's Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I wanted to take the opportunity to let all of you know just how thankful I am that you're all here, and for the words of encouragement that you share with me and with our community.

I also wanted to thank you for sharing your lives with me and touching my heart with your personal stories.

If I had my wish, I’d want all of us to spend Thanksgiving together this year.

Forget the logistics, because, yes, I’m well aware that we’d have to rent a small stadium to hold all of us, but wouldn't it be wonderful?

All of us together, free to be our best, most beautiful selves, free to do what we want and live the way we want. Just enjoying the day without worrying about what others are thinking, wondering if they're judging us for being alone.

You could just be.

You could just enjoy.

Free of the worry about those inevitable questions from your well-intentioned family members about whether you are dating anyone, leaving you to wondering about the hidden messages behind the questions.

Barring us all getting together in this one joyous gathering that I can, at least right now, only dream about, we can at least be with each other in spirit. We can feel good knowing that we all have a safe place to turn, a community of beautiful, encouraging women that we can reach out to in order to get the support we need.

So, in the spirit of being thankful, I wanted to convey to you a sense of what I hope for you to feel this holiday season. I want you to see that it’s not about any lack. It’s not about anything you don’t have. It’s about what you do have!

It's about seeing the opportunity, the endless possibilities that lie before you. It's about being grateful for everything that you have in your life right now, and forgetting about what you think might be missing. You see, what very few of us see when we’re still in it, when we’re still in that place where things aren't yet the way we pictured our lives at this point in time, is that we have some very special things to be thankful for.

So, while there are many more, and I'll ask you to come up with your own that apply to your specific life and circumstances, to get you started here are three things you can all be thankful for in your love life right now:

1.  You!

Yes, you know that beautiful woman otherwise known as you? The one that knows her own worth, who refuses to settle for anything less than she knows she deserves? You know how she figured this all out?

By going through what you've been through.

By being willing to put yourself out there and refusing to let your heart get hardened.

Few of us learn the things we do without going through our heartbreaks the hard way. Few of us remain unscathed. And yet, just by getting to this point, just by finding your way here, you’re showing that you've got that resilience to rediscover your true beautiful self and find a love for yourself first that you never knew you were capable of.

It’s only when we learn to love ourselves like this, that we shine that beautiful light of our true selves bright enough so that someone who’s truly deserving of you will be able to see exactly the woman he’s been looking to find in you.

2. That he didn't call or wouldn't commit.

I know it seems like the last thing you want to be thankful for. After all, that’s exactly what you wanted – you wanted him to call or maybe you were hoping for a commitment from him.

But please hear me when I say that if he wasn't there, if he wasn't on the same page as you, the very last thing you would have wanted in the end was a guy who was leading you on, giving you just enough to keep you hanging, wasting your life away waiting for him to finally be ready for commitment.

You would have found yourself in that miserable kind of a non-relationship with a guy who isn't really into you, a guy who is committing just enough for you to stay stuck in a relationship that he didn't really want.

No matter how much you wanted it to work out, know that you only knew the part of the story that was all about the potential only you were seeing; the rest of the story was the reality that he knew he wasn't on your page. The only ending that two people on different pages end up with is heartbreak, and you know you deserve more than that.

3. For all that is still to come.

This isn't how your story ends, no matter how much it seems like it sometimes. Your life up until now has just been one story, one way of seeing, one way of living. You are just beginning to catch a glimpse of the life that is still waiting for you.

We can get so stuck in that place of doubt, where we begin to think that the love and the life we desire, the life that seems so effortless for everyone else, is somehow out of our own reach. But when we come to see that there isn't a select chosen few who somehow deserve more, when we come to see that there is nothing we don’t have that someone else has, a type of shifting begins to happen. We start to question, we start to say why not me?, and we start to see the cultural factors that have played into a programming of how we believe ourselves and our lives to be.

With every learning experience along the way, a little more light shines through. A new way of seeing becomes that much more of a possibility, and a new energy and confidence begins to replace what was once only heartbreak and despair.

It doesn't matter where you've been, or what you've been through. See yourself the way I see you; see all that is still to come for you the way I see it for you. You haven’t been forgotten, you haven’t been passed by. Keep that beautiful dream alive in your heart and soul and don’t let anyone or anything extinguish it.

You have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday and every day!

How about you? What are you thankful for in your life right now? Tell us about it in the comments!